


Memoirs of an Infantry Officer

by mydogwatson



Series: Postcard Tales IV [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, Maybe fantasy?, Pre-Slash, References to Drugs, Victorian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-07
Updated: 2018-07-07
Packaged: 2019-06-06 20:34:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15202931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mydogwatson/pseuds/mydogwatson
Summary: An injured John Watson lies alone in a hospital bed in Afghanistan and then he gets a visitor. Of a sort.





	Memoirs of an Infantry Officer

**Author's Note:**

> Hi. I didn't get this posted for the 4th, but I am posting it on Chocolate Day, which is a much better holiday because: 1.It doesn't scare my dog. 2. There is chocolate.
> 
> Beyond that...I have no idea where this story came from and it is not what I intended to write. But it is what it is and I hope you enjoy it.

It follows that a man who has been to war will have more than sufficient memories with which to populate his sleepless nights.

As will the surgeon who has plunged his hands into the chests of far too many young men fresh from the battlefield or delivered a woman of a new life only to watch both mother and child slip away before the sun had set on the day.

Those poor bastards who are at once both healer and warrior oftentimes feel as if they will drown in those grim thoughts which come to them in the darkest hours of the night. No wonder some of them go more than a bit mad. I myself am not an exception, being no stranger to either those black thoughts or the madness.

Of course, I am an English gentleman, a creature of Victoria’s Empire, so I am reluctant to see myself as one who would succumb to such weaknesses. I prefer to place the blame for what happened that night several months ago at the feet of the terrible fever that had wracked my body for days or on the drugs used to alleviate the pain I suffered constantly. I was quite aware that the field surgeon was increasingly pessimistic about the odds of my survival. As a bit of a chancer myself, I understand the concept of odds very well.

I was also increasingly aware that it all mattered very little to me. Sometimes I dreamt of an after-life and it seemed much preferable to my current earthly existence.

But, yes, fever and drugs could explain so much.

And yet…

And yet…

So, to the night in question.

Unusually, on the occasion, I was alone in the Stygian confines of the ward, one of two which constituted the rather make-shift field hospital. Apparently a calmer period in our conflict with the enemy had permitted the evacuation of the other patients with whom I had shared the ward. It seemed that I had been deemed too fragile for the journey. I imagine those others were more than glad to escape my nightly battles with the dream world.

This night, sleep was evading me, but I did not care to summon anyone, as all the surgeon would do, all he could do really, was offer me more drugs and I had reached the point where the pain was more desirable than continuing the fogginess which plagued my mind.

Although I now recognise that possibly [even without a new dose of morphine] my mind remained horribly muddled. What was the alternative?

A single sputtering lamp in the far corner did little more than cast shadows, amorphous dancing shapes on the ceiling.

I struggled to lift my arm and reach the small table upon which a Chester solid silver pocket watch lay. It had belonged firstly to my father and then to my benighted brother Harry and was now mine. Fleetingly I wondered where it would go next. 

The dim light and my own weakened condition made deciphering the time difficult, but when I could finally make it out, there was no surprise in discovering that it was 03:15. That hour is the most miserable of the night-time. There is no scientific explanation for that, but as both a doctor and a patient I have always found 03:15 to be the nadir of existence.

It was precisely then that I saw some movement in the room, fleeting and as silent as those shadows on the ceiling. For a moment, I assumed that it was merely some member of the medical staff, although I was lucid enough to wonder how whomever it was had entered from that direction, where there was no doorway.

As I watched, the movement became a shape, still silent, but increasingly present.

The shape moved slowly, closer to where I lay and then resolved itself into a man. A man who reached my bedside and then dropped onto the camp stool placed there. He was not a doctor or one of the aides. It was no one I knew.

Neither was it anyone who belonged here, of that I was certain.

My eyes were quite accustomed to the lack of sufficient lighting; in consequence, I was able to study him. What I saw was a man probably a few years younger than my own age of thirty, attired in a way that was entirely inappropriate for the circumstance. [Although I would be hard-pressed even now to know in what circumstance his collarless and none-too-clean shirt, the filthy, ill-fitting trousers and two bare feet would have been appropriate.] He was not even wearing braces, so the disreputable trousers hung low on his slender hips and his hair was a bird’s nest of dark curls spilling over his forehead.

Even in my weak and fevered state, the skills I possessed as a doctor seemed to stir. Almost automatically, I took note of his too-bright and yet somehow empty eyes, the nearly purple bruises across his sharp cheekbones, the slightly greyish cast to his complexion. “Are you ill?” I managed to say, my voice hoarse.

The faint yet sardonic smile the young man gave me was no more appropriate than his garb. “I believe that I am dying,” he said in reply. “An unexpected miscalculation.” His left sleeve had been rolled up above the elbow and he looked at the bare arm almost indignantly. I followed his gaze and saw yet more bruises and far too many puncture marks. “Rather embarrassing, actually. I am, after all, something of a chemist.”

“Something of an idiot as well,” I pointed out.

I suppose that my rather fragile health and feverish brain would serve as a reason as to why I was so slow in realising the bizarre nature of this conversation or why I still felt absolutely no desire to summon aid. There seemed to be no threat coming from this pitiful fellow. In fact, his lips twitched just a bit, as if he were tempted to smile.

He glanced around at the empty beds of the ward. “Where am I? Just as a matter of mild interest.”

For the first time in many weeks, I felt a bit amused. “Near Peshawar,” I said; then, at his blank look, I added, “Afghanistan. Where should you be?”

“On the floor of my rooms in Montague Street,” he replied. “London.”

We sat in silence for a moment. I felt no unease.

I thought again about the doctor’s words, uttered when he no doubt believed me too far into the fever to hear or understand what he was saying to the aide. _I don’t expect poor Watson here to carry on for much longer._

The sound I made now was somewhere between a chuckle and a sob.

The stranger, whom I will admit seemed increasingly interesting, [yes, I do realise how ridiculous that sounds] quirked a brow at me.

“So apparently we are two dying men from two very different places, having a chat in the middle of the night. In Afghanistan,” I said. “How peculiar.”

“03:15,” he mused. “I suppose that is as good a time as any to die.”

I glanced down at the watch again and indeed it still read 03:15. That seemed odd, but in context…well, clearly, oddness was the theme of the night.

“You are too young to die,” I said with a fierceness that had been missing from my nature for far too long. “And too clever to kill yourself.”

He shrugged. “A miscalculated 7% solution or a bullet from some hostile native. Sacrificing yourself for Queen and Country or just wanting to escape the stultifying boredom of life. Does any of it matter? Dead is dead.”

I suppose he had a point, although as an officer and a gentleman, it would have been more proper for me to dispute that argument. “I expect chemistry does not bore you,” I said instead.

“Sometimes.” He pyramided his hands in front of his mouth. “I do enjoy a good murder,” he said.

“I am going to assume that you mean solving one,” I said. “Not committing it.”

A smile flickered across his face. “Dangerous to assume. But, yes. I would like to set myself up as a consulting detective. But…” He glanced at his arm again. “There was one rather clever murder recently,” he began. “The Yard was as useless as ever and I…” Then he broke off. “Oh,” he said, lifting a hand to his chest. “I think…”

Then he vanished.

Yes, I realise that those words make me sound more mad than ever. So be it. One moment he was sitting there, so close that I could have touched him, had the idea occurred and then he was gone.

Perhaps he died. Perhaps he was miraculously saved. I would never know, which brought a tinge of what felt very like grief to me.

*

I never told anyone about what had happened that night, of course. They would have shipped me off to Bedlam, I am certain. At any rate, it felt like something private, a moment belonging only to the young man and myself.

For some reason, after that night, my lot in life improved somewhat. The Incident seemed to serve as a turning point in my condition. The medical staff was surprised and actually rejected any credit for my survival. A miracle, they called it.

My attitude was that a miracle should have had a better resolution. A better one, at any rate, than finding myself adrift in the cesspool of London with all the loungers and idlers of the Empire, with neither kith nor kin to whom I could turn, lacking any prospects at all.

A true miracle would surely have brought me a kinder fate than to have become a man with nothing better to do in the middle of the day than limping my way through the park, on my way to no where in particular, wishing so fervently that something, anything, would happen to me.

Above the cursed tapping of my stick against the path, I heard someone call my name.

My first impulse was to ignore the voice, but then he called again, sounding quite determined, as if he would chase me all the way across the park if necessary

Reluctantly, I stopped and turned, wondering only how quickly I could dismiss whatever former acquaintance had greeted me, so that once again I might be on my solitary way.

***

**Author's Note:**

> Title From: Memoirs of an Infantry Officer by Siegfried Sassoon


End file.
